Sunday, 4 January 2009

Rightmove new home page

Happy New Year to you all

And Rightmove start the New Year with a new look home page as below:

I am guessing this is the beginning of their marketing drive and I suspect there may be a few comments on the choice of design/style. Do I like it? Well, one has to ask why, what is it doing there, is it functional, usable and secondly, one has to remember that this is not a start up changing the style of their page, this is the market leader updating a 10 year plus strong brand so one would hope a little research has gone into these changes.

I suspect the 'eye' theme is going to appear in their marketing literature that will soon be hitting us online and in the newspapers. If I am correct then I sense a classic branding mistake whereby they have probably produced a respectable marketing campaign targeting the user by adopting the 'eye'. The mistake is that they have then realised the marketing literature brand has no synergy with the website and thus have quickly updated the home page. I must say I can see no other explanation for the new home page look. It does draw my eye (sorry) to the search box, but no more so than if this space was white and it does feel to me to make the rest of the page redundant, i.e. the eyes are too strong and the rest of the page pales into insignificance. If this were the intention then why not just have white page and search box. Indeed, the Rightmove logo (and recognised brand) is equally diminished.

That said, I note it is also appearing as secondary navigational banners throughout the site and it may be clearer when the marketing drive kicks in later this month (my guess on timeline). I may be completely off on this one, but it just feels like a mistake I have been guilty of in the past.